Coach Jim Bauer certainly has drilled it into the heads of his Morenci High School basketball players what their roles are each game.

He saw the fruits of his labor come into plain view Tuesday night as the Bulldogs executed extremely well both on offense and defense to hand Lenawee Christian a 47-42 defeat in a raucous Morenci gym, a game reminiscent of a district final.

And speaking of district finals, Tuesday's game could be a foreshadowing of what could happen a month down the road in the Class D final at Camden-Frontier.

Nothing was resolved in the first half of the game as each team learned the other on the fly, then made necessary adjustments at halftime. At that time, Lenawee Christian owned a 23-21 lead, thanks in part to the Bulldogs suffering from some turnover issues, committing 11 in the first half. Morenci led 11-10 after the first quarter, but started the second quarter with four turnovers and a missed shot on their first five possessions, giving the Cougars quality opportunities.

Morenci was able to stay in the game in the second quarter despite taking just six shots in the quarter, but canning three from long range with Alex Thomas, Braden Mellon and Austin Sandusky connecting. Sandusky kept the Cougars' defense honest by hitting 4-of-5 from the 3-point line to lead all scorers with 16 points. However, Morenci's scoring was done by committee, a patient committee.

"We've been talking a lot lately about locking down on our possessions, and tonight we did a much better job with tat," Morenci coach Jim Bauer said. "Defensively, we didn't want them to just go up and dunk on us all night, and our guys pressured their guards enough to make them less likely to be able to go up and score. We moved them out very well.

"(Grant) Hohlbein is a stud, and I was more concerned about him than their big guys."

Hohlbein was held to six points and the team's leading scorer for the season, Maxwell, also scored just six points. All the LCS starters finished the game with three or four fouls, complicating the Cougars' best laid plans.

"Our guys in foul trouble killed us," said LCS coach Scott McKelvey. "We also missed a lot of shots inside, and when we had opportunities to take the lead, we couldn't, and we had several good opportunities."

In a game void of scoring runs, the host Bulldogs turned in the most important one of the night in the fourth quarter. With 5:01 left to play, Hohlbein hit a 12-footer to give the Cougars a 41-34 lead. That opened up a 10-0 run for Morenci over the next four minutes, with Torin Merillat's free throw with a minute left leaving the Bulldogs with a 44-41 lead. In that run, Morenci junior Bobby Black hits arguably the biggest basket of his career when he stepped in front of an LCS pass and took it the other way for an easy layup, putting Morenci up 43-41.The Bulldogs would be able to hold on the rest of the way.

Page 2 of 2 - "Preparation for this game was minimal, but we did have a good practice last night," added Bauer. "We basically focused on contesting everything that they sent into the post, and tried to get as good a position underneath and hopefully get some over-the-back calls.

"When we were down seven with five minutes to go, I just told them we had a lot of possessions left, and we didn't panic, our heads weren't down, they responded as well as we could have expected."

Morenci (7-4) finished hitting 14-of-26 shots from the floor, including 7-of-15 from the 3-point line. Sandusky's 16 points and Merillat's 11 led the way.